Home-roasted fresh chestnuts for holiday snacking

Before roasting, cut an “X” into the chestnut, slicing through the hard outer shell and into the inner skin. (This is done to prevent the chestnut from exploding while steam is created inside the shell.)

I was in New York City earlier this month and one of the first things I did before heading over to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas tree, was to buy a paper bagful of fresh roasted chestnuts from a street food vendor whose other specialties included foods like Sabrett hot dogs, potato knishes and super-sized soft pretzels. The chestnuts stayed hot long enough to make peeling them easy (a cooled down chestnut is near impossible to peel) and as far as street food goes, eating warm chestnuts, in the middle of Manhattan in December, is about as glorious as snacking gets.

If you can grab hold of some fresh chestnuts (I found some at Krogers in Belfair Village) and don't mind skipping the part about a New York City street food vendor roasting them for you, it's pretty easy to roast chestnuts yourself in your own kitchen. Here’s how:

First, cut an “X” in the skin of the chestnut, slicing through the hard outer shell and into the inner skin. (This is done to prevent the chestnut from exploding while steam is being created inside the shell.) Place the scored chestnuts on a baking sheet in a single layer and bake in 400-degree oven for 20 minutes, stirring every five to ten minutes. Remove chestnuts from the oven and using a kitchen towel to help handle the hot chestnuts, peel away the outer shell and thin brown skin to get to the nutmeats. (Do not allow the chestnuts to cool too much before peeling, or the shell will be impossible to remove. In the event they become to cool to peel, reheat the chestnuts for a few minutes in the oven.)

Chestnuts are very high in tannic acid that can upset the digestive system if eaten raw – so do not eat raw chestnuts. Roasting (or boiling) chestnuts neutralizes their tannic acid.

Store in-shell, fresh whole chestnuts in a perforated plastic bag in the refrigerator for up to a week, or freeze, in a tightly sealed container for up to three months. You can freeze cooked, shelled chestnuts in an airtight container for six months.

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It's hard to beat roasted pecans. We have pecan trees, so we eat a lot of them. My wife takes halves and places them in a colander. She pours hot water over them, shakes excess water off and then lays them on a cookie sheet one deep and sprinkles salt on them. The salt on the cookie sheet will rinse off later. She bakes them until toasted to taste.

The great thing about pecans is that they are high in omega 3 oil as well as proteins.

We have 5 trees with two of them Stuarts that are over a hundred years old and we get over 1200 pounds from them alone. I just planted 5 more Desirables, a commercial tree that makes mammoth size paper shells. The only problem with Desirables is that they are susceptible to scab and must be sprayed 3 or 4 times with an antifungal spray, mostly in th spring when the new growth is appearing.